Water: A Battle Between the Bottle and the Faucet

NYT: A Battle Between the Bottle and the Faucet
By BILL MARSH
Published: July 15, 2007


New York ads offer tap water as an appealing choice over commercial beverages.

THOSE eight daily glasses of water you’re supposed to drink for good health? They will cost you $0.00135 — about 49 cents a year — if you take it from a New York City tap.

Or, city officials suggest, you could spend 2,900 times as much, roughly $1,400 yearly, by drinking bottled water. For the extra money, they say, you get the added responsibility for piling on to the nation’s waste heap and encouraging more of the industrial emissions that are heating up the planet.

But trends in American thirst quenching favor the 2,900-fold premium, as the overflowing trash cans of Central Park attest. In fact, bottled water is growing at the expense of every other beverage category except sports drinks. It has overtaken coffee and milk, and it is closing in on beer. Tap, if trends continue, would be next.

Now New York City officials — like the mayors of Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and San Francisco — are campaigning to get people to reverse course and open their faucets instead of their wallets. The city Health Department, mindful of high obesity rates, says water is more healthful than many other, sugar-filled drinks. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection touts its low environmental impact. Both note that it’s practically free (leaving aside those New Yorkers for whom paying extra is a lifestyle choice).

New York’s water is the envy of municipalities everywhere. It is one of just five major American systems whose water is so good it needs little or no filtration, saving energy and chemicals. (The others are Boston, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Seattle.)...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/weekinreview/15marsh.html

Buy a britta.

The chemicals you ingest from liquids stored in plastic bottles are outrageous and far more damaging to you and to the environment. These include things like antimony, plasticizers...The bottled stuff is no safer.

added chemicals you don't want is a reverse osmosis system (not cheap)... When I have a home, I will be saving my pennies to invest in a system like this. I do have a filter on my tap now and I use it washing veggies and for cooking... But since they decided to add fluoride (which is defined as hazardous waste if not injected into our water), I am a bit more precautious... Since its been added, I have had some hormone issues subside from it.

bottled water is dead water. Not his words, but the words of the water testing lab who tested bottled waters. With tap water you get minerals, which you need. What does the lab tech drink, tap water.

Personally, the only time I drink bottled water is if I have to, otherwise give me good old cheap and dependable and LIVE tap water. Yes, I'm thrifty.

zalinda

I bought 6 liter bottles of generic store brand water over a year ago. I have one sitting next to me right now.

I have refilled those babies over and over and over again, carry them where ever I go and then refilling them again.

They are finally getting close to becoming seed starters as the plastic is getting 'soft' from the use, but then I can replace them for 89 cents and start the whole cycle over again.

:shrug:

But I buy one bottle and refill it from the tap or Brita pitcher until the bottle falls apart, or I lose it somewhere.

My kids have sturdier, reusable bottles that they take with them. They never buy the bottled stuff.

over and over. in fact they were given away as an advertising thing by my chiropractor over 11 years ago and I'm still using them

:rofl:

It's also becoming a battle here in Michigan, as in all the Great Lakes States. Foreign owned companies take enormous quantities of water from the lakes, and sadly our Governor helped make it happen. My wife and I always use city water, although we do use a Pur.

They would flush the hydrants and the city water would turn a nasty brown color for a day. I collected some samples and let the particles settle to the bottom. I would have loved to have known what that brown gook actually was. Also, we would get mailings from the water department warning that the water might not be safe for the elderly or small children. Seems too many people are addicted to chem-lawn in that town.

To add insult to injury, we would get a $400-$500 water tax bill each year.

Now I'm on well water, with a whole new set of worries. Being on well water and also having a septic system just doesn't seem right.

So insulting that corporations have so succeeded in selling us "water." What next? Air? And then the studies showed how bad the plastic is for you and your kids - not to mention the wasted energy in collection of water, transport of water, bottling, and discard of all those plastic bottles.

Tap water all the way (through a Britta - and not even always, and in stainless steel water bottles for the whole family).

Tap water is WAY green.

So if you put water in a bottle that's bad. But if I favor that water and put 'Coke' or 'Dr Pepper' on the label then it's ok?

Where's the concern about sodas? Why not complaints about your sweetened/flavored water?

Here's my beef. I never drink sodas. And a good water fountain is not always easy to find. Many time the water barely trickles out.

How about a look at the soda drinking fools and their trash?

watch the dvd THE CORPORATION